IMPROVING SPEECH INTERVENTION FOR DEAF CHILDREN The long-range goal of this project is to develop intervention practices that will optimize speech production outcomes for prelingually deafened children, particularly those with cochlear implants (CIs). There is remarkably little scientific evidence to support the treatment approaches used in speech intervention with such children. Data are needed to guide clinicians in selecting the most appropriate treatment goals and most effective treatment procedures. Speech/voice physiologic data from children implanted after four years of age support the need for early and highly focused intervention directed at remediation of their deviant speech/voice characteristics. One aim of this application is to determine if there is a similar need for children who have had fewer years of auditory deprivation. Therefore, the frequency of occurrence of deviant speech/voice behaviors (i.e., negative intraoral air pressures, high fundamental frequencies) for children implanted before age three and after age four will be compared. A second aim is to compare the efficacy of two forms of speech intervention with children with CIs. One form of treatment will include auditory discrimination and speech production activities. The other will focus on speech production only. Speech production and perception outcomes with both forms of treatment will be compared. Other aims will address how the acoustic characteristics of speech production of children with hearing loss (HL) are affected by 1) simultaneous speaking and signing and signed models 2) instruction to speak more clearly and 3) different speech elicitation procedures. These findings will provide information about 1) the ways in which signing and signed input could be adapted to help deaf children learn the most normal speech production patterns possible during intervention 2) the successful and unsuccessful strategies used by children with HL to maximize their intelligibility and 3) the hierarchy of difficulty of tasks that are used during speech intervention with children with HL. The ultimate goal of this application is to contribute to the development of improved intervention procedures so that more deaf children can become intelligible speakers. Such an achievement would expand the social, educational, and vocational opportunities of deaf children.